We finished up with chapter 12 today. We did a review for a half hour or so, and then Brandon took the quiz. He's clearly looking forward to being finished with Biology.
Brandon finished up his discussion posts and should be in good shape for the quiz tomorrow. I tried to get him to do some review, or work on English, but he was done and decided to leave early.
Today Brandon finished up going through the material for chapter 12, and we got all the vocab entered into google docs. He then started working on the discussion posts, which required a bit more research than usual. But in the end, he crafted an interesting post and will continue to work on it tomorrow.
We went through the lecture materials for this week, and started working our way through Chapter 12. Brandon has a pretty set routine in place now, and it's very difficult to get him to vary from it.
Brandon and I worked together to get through his second computer applications project. This meant that I read the directions while Brandon followed each step of the process. We got into a pretty good rhythm, but since we have a different version of Microsoft Word, there were some discrepancies in the procedures. According to the professor, different versions of Word should not affect the process, but there were moments where Brandon and I became stuck on certain procedures. Brandon wanted desperately to drop this course, and after looking at his degree audit, it seems that he doesn't really need the class after all.
Brandon made a special trip to school today to put the final touches on the outline for his final paper. Brandon needed to provide support for the three claims that he made, and the majority of class was spent gathering the necessary research from reputable sources to support his ideas. After some time, Brandon was able to gather all of the necessary data and explain how they provide support for his theses. After that, Brandon compiled a bibliography.
Brandon worked on several of the projects for his computer applications course. On the whole, Brandon detests this course: he indicates that it is too easy but requires a significant amount of work, distracting him from his other, more difficult, courses. We discussed the possibility of Brandon's dropping this, but I made sure to impress upon Brandon that if he elects to drop this course, he will have to make up for it some where along the line: i.e. take 5 classes when he could take only 4 per semester. Brandon understood this, but continued to discuss the possibility of dropping the class. After we finished one of the projects, we continued working on his English outline, which is coming along nicely.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, Brandon continued working on the three claims that he wanted to prove in his paper. Since Brandon's thesis states that the U.S. government should require the EEOC to create a division of labor dedicated solely to the enforcement and detection of discrimination against mothers and pregnant women at work, it was necessary for Brandon to provide the following: first, that mothers and pregnant women are in fact discriminated against within the American workforce. Second, that the existing laws do nothing to protect these individuals, and finally, that Brandon's proposed solution will work better than proposed legislation.
Per Brandon's course requirements, we created an outline for the first draft of his final paper. In this outline, Brandon had to articulate his paper's thesis, provide background information, state three different claims, and provide a "so what?" explanation. We got through the first half of this assignment, and we will continue working on the next few claims later this week.
